CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: Hidden Hollow 2007 Re-Cap

To those who couldn't make to this year's Hidden Hollow Star Party held on Oct 12-14, you missed a beauty. I’ve been meaning to post a re-cap of this event, but a few things have gotten in the way since. Oh, yeah, I hear there’s a comet floating out there somewhere…

Hidden Hollow is one of the more venerable star parties in this part of the country. While northern Ohio isn't typically blessed with sterling weather, it is well-placed to draw quite a crowd of astronomy enthusiasts. A 31" telescope at the ready in the Warren Rupp Observatory doesn't hurt, either!

I had been to the 1998 and 2002 Hidden Hollows, but this star party took on an entirely new meaning, because I was selected to be one of this year's speakers at the event. Doing a presentation in front of a group of people is an entirely different can of worms. I had to admit...I was nervous. I diligently went over my presentation on haze and transparency and its effect on deep-sky observing until a few days prior, when I finally decided, ah, heck, it's done; no more messing with it. “Que sera, sera,” as they say, but there was a bit of anxiousness and nervousness that just didn’t go away.

I did get through the presentation on Friday afternoon, but I could tell I didn’t quite nail the delivery; too many times my tongue and brain were operating at different speeds. By happenstance, one of the presenters, Mike Best, had to make a last-minute cancellation, so I was able to fill his 3-4 p.m. slot on Saturday as well. I thought, “a chance for redemption!”, as I had originally drawn an early 9-10 a.m. slot for Saturday. I then watched the remaining presentations on Friday, including one for the Radio Jove project by Jason Schinn, and one on amateur astronomy from 1950-1965 by Ron Ravneberg (just a word for the wise—Ron’s presentations are un-wordly! If he’s scheduled to speak, go to that star party. If he expresses interest in your star party, invite him.)

Friday night started out cloudy, so I had the opportunity to mingle around. The Miami Valley Astronomical Society was well-represented at the star party, and is one of the more livelier bunches, for sure. As one member humorously quipped, “you can have a club with character, or characters.”

Shortly after 10 p.m., the skies went from cloudy to clear--and I do mean cuh-leeeeeer. Transparency was very good. Warren Rupp isn’t uber-dark, but it’s in the “yellow” on the CSC light-pollution map; just dark enough to see M31’s dust lanes in the 25x100s. One of the more rewarding views was through Ron’s 4.5” f/15 refractor, dubbed “The Phoenix”. It’s one of the most distinctive, prettiest scopes I’ve ever seen, but there’s one thing prettier than looking at it—looking through it rocks! Now I’m normally in the aperture-trumps-all mindset, but I had to admit that M57 and Epsilon Lyrae were just awesome in this scope.

Oh, but speaking of aperture, there was the 31” Warren Rupp scope…mysteriously free of a queue! So fellow WCAC-member (and contributor to my haze presentation) Phil Hoyle and I spent a good deal of time looking through the big scope along with RAS member Bruce Scodova.

Um, how do I put this? A 31” from a decent sky is like astronomical pornography. It’s not averted vision, but rather perverted vision. M110, something I normally consider an expendable object, actually showed quite a bit of detail. M33’s spiral arms and H-II regions just screamed at us through the eyepiece. NGC 253 was like a photograph, with so much dust detail I couldn’t hope to describe it. Stephan’s Quintet was laughably-bright, and nearby NGC 7331 was just stunning. The real showstoppers were NGC 7662 (the Blue Snowball in Andromeda) and NGC 246 in Cetus. The former had a multi-layered appearance that was eerily-similar to the current 17P/Holmes apparition, and NGC 246 + O-III filtration had tenous vapors spanning a large portion of the ½-degree FOV.

On Saturday, I slept in and missed Mark Friedman’s presentation on the 2006 solar eclipse across the Mediterranean, but I did hit the others, including Ron’s second presentation on a gorgeous RFT, Terry Mann’s talk on the Year of Astronomy in 2009, and Tom Whiting’s “chalk talk” on navigating towards marquee deep-sky objects.

I was scheduled to speak after Tom, and as I was about to begin, I noticed that Phil Harrington (!) was in the front row, and that the audience was quite a bit bigger than Friday’s presentation. (yeah, noooooo pressure…) I don’t know how, or why, but for some reason, this went much better. Still nervous, but I was calmer and more pointed in my delivery. I honest-to-God had a blast during that hour!

The marquee speakers then came after that. Longtime Ohioan / astronomer extraordinaire Brent Archinal talked about the shape of things to come in lunar mapping. Some of the stuff slated for future lunar exploration is truly neat stuff!

Did I mention Phil Harrington? He was the keynote speaker. His presentation—one not to be missed—was on backyard observatories. If you think you’d like to build a backyard observatory but have challenging constraints, you’ve simply got to see this.

Saturday evening was clear, though not as transparent as Friday night. I had my 25x100s set up for passersby, but I once again found myself gravitating towards the 31”. I can’t remember what I looked at, unfortunately, because I spent most of the time mingling around. Sadly, I had trouble staying awake. I have some anxiety issues about public speaking, and after my second presentation, the adrenaline just crashed. Sad, because it looked like a lot of people were there for the long haul, and I had trouble making it past 10 p.m.

All in all, a wonderful time. Tammy Plotner, president of the Richland Astronomical Society, was incredibly helpful and encouraging as I went through the transition from attendee to presenter. And I gotta say—despite my anxiety issues about public speaking, presenting at a star party is something I’ll always treasure. It’s fun to attend star parties; it’s 10 times the blast talking at one! I can’t thank the people at the RAS, and especially Tammy, Ken, Barb, Keith and Robert for all their hard work in putting this together. Star parties literally are what you make them.

Clear Skies,
Phil

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"The hopeful depend on a world without end, whatever the hopeless may say"--Rush, "Manhattan Project"

Wilderness Center Astronomy Club member since 1995
ICQ Comet Observer Code: CRE01
*****
12" f/4.9 Skywatcher Collapsible Dobsonian
8" f/4.9 Orion Newtonian on alt-az mount
Oberwerk 15x70 Binoculars
Minimalist Eyepiece Collection: 30mm ES-82, 22mm Vixen LVW, 14mm Delos, 10mm Delos, 2X GSO ED Barlow, 4X Powermate